(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for receiving a request relating to image processing from an external source and executing the received request.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Recently, so-called digital multifunction peripherals (hereinafter, “MFPs”) are in wide use in an office environment as well as in other environments. MFPs are peripherals having multifunction including: a scan job of scanning an image of a document; a copy job of printing out scanned image data of a document; a print job of printing out image data according to a print instruction given from an external terminal; and a FAX job of transmitting/receiving image data to/from an external FAX device.
Being capable of performing multifunction, MFPs are advantageous for users in that there is no need to have separate devices such as copiers and printers, and that reduced cost and improved usability are realized.
Turning now to MFP developers' view, it is required to develop a number of software programs (hereinafter, referred to as “applications”) for carrying out a number of functions such as scanning. Naturally, it takes enormous amounts of time to provide all the software programs individually. To address this disadvantage, JP unexamined patent application publication No. 2002-84383, for example, discloses a technique to build a platform with a general-purpose operating system (hereinafter, “OS”) and portions common to all the applications. Consequently, efficient development of applications is enabled because what need to be developed are portions other than the platform.
Although efficiency in development is realized, the above technique has a following problem. That is, after delivery of an MFP to a user, the user may request additional functionality that any applications existing in the MFP are not capable of (so-called a customizing request). Unfortunately, however, the MFP is not configured to meet the request easily. For example, when the user desires scanning to be performed in a mode not provided by an existing scan application, the existing application must be altered on the whole exclusively for that particular user, which requires time-consuming work and thus is not practical. As above, MFPs according to the conventional technique are extremely poor in the scalability of functionality.